"She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake": representations of women in contemporary film noir
| dc.contributor.author | Hewlett, Julie Lynne | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | McLarty, Lianne | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-02-20T21:55:37Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-02-20T21:55:37Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2000 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of History in Art | |
| dc.description.abstract | This thesis examines the representation of women in contemporary film noir. Its purpose is to demonstrate how film noir, by virtue of its pessimistic and anti-institutional thematic concerns and formal strategies, offers a unique opportunity for more progressive representations of women and gender relations than mainstream narrative cinema conventionally allows. Through an investigation of Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Body Heat, The Last Seduction, Bound, and Diabolique l identify the ways in which film noir exceeds and challenges the boundaries of conventional mainstream narrative cinema. The methodology used incorporates theories of representation, theories of spectatorship and feminist cultural theory. This work seeks to articulate the way in which film noir problematizes and denaturalizes patriarchal social practices and systems, provides the female spectator with a pleasurable, empowered construction of woman through the figure of the femme fatale, and expands discourse on gender and sexuality by subverting the mainstream endorsement of a heterosexist cultural norm. | |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/21261 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | |
| dc.title | "She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake": representations of women in contemporary film noir | |
| dc.type | Thesis |